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Bold fabric colors, fusible web release paper, creative cutting. These are the elements of fusible fabric collages. Art quilts that have character. For this two-part series, I welcome my friends and guests Laura Wasilowski and Frieda Anderson international quilt artists who share a technique, yet have their own style. Frieda, your artwork is inspired by nature. Yes, Nancy, every day I walk with my little dog and I'm inspired by the woods and rolling fields around my neighborhood. Now, Laura, you take a little different approach. Same colors, same technique. I usually am inspired by the fabric scraps that I have and the colors the wonderful colors that I have. I improvise and make up my designs as I go along. Laura and Frieda will share with us the workshop approach to this expressive technique. "Art Quilts- Fusible Collage Workshop." That's what's coming up next on Sewing with Nancy. Sewing with Nancy TV's longest-airing sewing and quilting program with Nancy Zieman

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Fun colors. That's what I love about your work. Bright colors, right, it keeps us happy. Then, this is a fusible technique so we're going to talk about this. This is the key. It is. I use a fusible that has a paper backing on it. When I apply the fusible I apply it to the whole piece of fabric. I want to make sure that my fusible stays inside the shape of my fabric. I want to use a hot, dry iron. No steam when you're applying the fusible. When you apply the fusible, it heats up. You want to let it cool down. I'm going to work without the paper on the fabric. I'm going to peel the paper off and then cut out my shapes. One thing to avoid is to make sure you don't over-fuse. I've done that, a lot! What happens is it turns glassy. And you can see that, as opposed to opaque. No steam. No steam. We'll use steam later but not when you're applying the fusible to the fabric. So after it's dried then you're going to remove the paper and save it. Save it, because we're going to design on it and we're going to re-fuse to it. You just peel it off. It should peel very nicely right off, just like that. So the first collage technique we're going to feature is this cute little Midwestern landscape. You're going to learn in the workshop how to draw this out. It's 8-1/2" by 11", which you have done. Right, I'm going to show you a technique of creating the stripey units in the field. The first thing that I did was I took my fabrics and I cut them on the bias. Pretty different colors so I can get different colors in my field. Then I have cut them about a half-inch wide I traced around the shapes of my fields on my release paper. You can trace in pencil, or a permanent marker. Or even colored pencil will work. And you separated them. I have, so that I can fuse right on the paper. I am going to do my fusing technique where you slightly overlap your edges. I have just lovingly tacked my fabric onto my release paper. It will stick right there. I'm going to move this from the cutting board. I slightly overlap the edges when I fuse them together so the top one sticks to the one underneath. That is a stripey fusing technique. Fast! Right on this paper. Right. Let me do one more, just for fun. I want to alternate the colors so I get that depth. Depth of field. Right, exactly. And I use different colors for different parts of the fields. Here you can see that I have all five of those done out in different colors. One of the advantages of this technique is because I fuse right on top of my drawing that drawing is going to transfer to the back of my fused fabric. So when I go to cut it out, I have a line to follow. Very clever! Yes. Very clever. It's not a mirror image it's the exact design that you've drawn. That's the best part about it. One of the things you want to keep in mind is I give myself a little bit of extra so that when I assemble them together the shapes will slightly overlap one on top of the other. To know how they're going to be assembled just put your release paper over your fabric. Then I can reassemble that back together. I created the sky and the fields, both with stripey units. Look at the great dimension. What a great technique for the first one. Then I have another idea. You can also, of course, use solid shapes. If I didn't want to use the stripey unit it would look like that out of solid colors. Easy enough. Just overlapping the collaged pieces. But then to the collaged pieces you can also add some additional dimension. Elements on top. To create the field in this little quilt that's called Sister Quilt I did a stripey unit for the sky. But I started with solid colors of green. The first thing I did was to trace the shapes of the field onto my release paper. I can use this paper, either side works fine. You separated the elements out. So I can work right there. I like what you've done here. You've predetermined your little overlap. Right. I decide if I'm going to do it, top or bottom and I try to be consistent on all three of them. Here are my three basic green shapes. I have taken a lighter color green and cut on the bias using a decorative blade. Because I cut on the bias, it lets me curve it very nicely. When I am using these decorative blades I want to turn my mat over to the back side because they will scar your mat. I have just cut them on an angle. I use force when I cut, because they are an undulating blade. There I have a nice little decorative piece. I've built that collage together. Here's what it would look like on top of my release paper. All these elements you'll get these pattern pieces in the workbook. Or you can design your own, just simply, to practice this. The color and the design of the collages is so attractive. What a great way. Fun and easy. Fun and easy, to create a fabric collage. Let's look one more time. You can also see little, itty bitty pieces of the leaves. That I cut apart from the decorative strips. A great way of using a decorative blade and fun fabrics. Laura is going to continue our workshop on fusible collage quilts but taking, as you said, a more improvisational approach. This little daisy basket features a lot of collage techniques. If you look closely, you'll see there's a large collage in the background. The tablecloth is a pattern collage. The basket is a woven collage. Even this braid here is a collage. You take it and you build it on release paper beforehand and then cut it into the shape that you want. You're not starting with a pattern. No, I improvise as I go along. That's okay, we're showing the two techniques. Gradated fabrics. Oh, yeah, you want to start with beautiful fabric. If I'm building this large collage for the background what I'll do is kind of rough cut shapes like that. I want to overlap them on release paper. Just as a refresher, these have been fused just like we detailed earlier. All of the fabric I work with is fused. I'm building on release paper. I can remove it then, later on, if I want. When I build a collage, I make sure that I always put the darker value on top of the lighter value. I'm just overlapping them maybe a quarter of an inch, like that. I'll slip my fabrics on top of each other slide them under like that, to build my background collage. Then I'm going to add about five seconds of heat. That's all it takes to build that little collage. When it cools down, then I can peel it off and I'll have a collage that looks something like this. That's the background for the quilt. Instant, and what fun. But you can build other kinds of collages. This is a pattern collage. When I'm building pattern collages a lot of times, what I'm working with are free-cut shapes. I'll start with a large background fabric. Then I'll take my sharp little scissors and I'm going to free-cut shapes that I can drop down onto that background fabric. Again, I'm working right on top of the release paper. I free-cut shapes. Maybe I line them up, or zigzag, random. I can stack shapes like that. I can make pattern collages just like that. And you have some batiks, some hand-dyed fabrics. You've mixed them in this little design. It shows kind of a study in pattern collages. What fun, and bias cut, I like it. You get to play with all that pattern and color. And color, yes. Here's my pattern collage that I actually made for the tablecloth. It's little stripes and little squares. These are actually cut on the bias, and that's important. We discuss that because this is raw edge appliqu. Yes, you see the edges. You want a nice, clean cut whenever you're doing a fused fabric. If you cut on the bias, if you look at this here. What I have is a square of fabric. A bias cut, of course, is on the 45-degree angle of that grain of the fabric. This edge right here, all along, there's bias. I can cut out stems for flowers. I can cut out leaves for my plants. Little tiny, tiny bias strips. They don't fray and they curve as well. Laura was able to curve a portion of the greenery because it was bias cut in this area. You can see the variety of little strips. Then we have some basket weaving. Yes, this is another thing you can do with bias cut strips. Here I have a set of vertical, or warp strips if you want to call it. I just tacked them down on the release paper, again. I'm going to weave with them. I pick up every other one. And my weft strips, the strips that go across are also cut on the bias. Then I don't have to worry about fraying at all. There's my weft. I drop it in like this. As I go, I fuse it down. But let me take my little tweezers. These are really handy. I can kind of scoot it down, tuck it in there. All I need now is about five seconds of heat, Nancy. There you go. One, two, we'll count fast. Just to tack it into place You don't want to expose the glue to too much heat for too long, because you'd kill the glue. Then what I end up with is a collage that looks like that. There's my woven collage. You'll see that the basket from the daisy art quilt was cut from this design. That's right. You build a collage first, then you cut the shape. There are more elements of collage in this design. There's one more idea that you could try. Remember those skinny little pieces of bias fused fabric I cut? Here you can try braiding. It's just like braiding your hair. Go over and under. You fuse as you go. I tack it with the iron. I'll let you do that. I'm going to continue to braid all the way down and make a braided collage. Another option of course is to add all sorts of little strips and to braid that way. You have to have an odd number of strips. You weave it across like that. Fun. We want to repeat the technique of transferring the pattern because it's really unique to fusible collages. It really is. This is a really great way to get an image or an exact shape that you want on your fused fabric. It only works with fused fabric. You have to start out with a pattern that you want to transfer. Your glue has to be all over the fabric. There's the glue. What I do, is I'll take a black marker and I'll trace that shape right onto release paper. It has to be release paper, because you want it to release. It has the silicone coating that allows it to happen. So, I trace my design. And what's really neat about this is what you see is what you get. I'm going to take my design. I've traced it. I go to my fused fabric. That's the glue side; I put ink to glue. Ink to glue. Five seconds. Five seconds a piece. I have one here. Let it dry. You always have to let it cool, not dry. Always let it cool down. Once it cools, what happens is as you remove it like that the glue has picked up the ink. Sometimes you can press this again. Yes, you can use this multiple times on lighter value fabrics that same tracing. Laura has shared with us many techniques of working with a collage. From the background, weaving, braiding, using bias strips. You'll find many ways in your creative art quilt of how to incorporate those into your design. It's now Frieda's turn to share with us some free form collage designs, to add to her creations. Right, so let's review a little bit about adding the little leaves here. I've taken a decorative cut and cut that apart with my scissors to create my little leave shapes. Then I can fuse those right. How easy is that? Pretty easy. You could use those for seeds, as well. They don't have to be leaves. I like to start out with a variety of colors of greens to create my different tree compositions. One of the other techniques I use is my decorative blades to get three different designs. I have cut with my decorative blade again, on the bias, and made one end a little fatter and a little thinner at the other end. Then, I have assembled it with the boughs going down and with the boughs going up. They can go both ways. Another way is to just cut a triangular shape. I can slice that apart or I can leave it whole. I can cut individual leaf shapes with my decorative blades. As we look at this, Frieda traced the shape of the sky on the release paper so that you could get the right proportions. So I would have some scale to work against. Another way that I also create tree shapes is to use that fused stripey collage again for the shapes. I just slightly overlap them on my release paper. Here's a larger one and a smaller one. I love the little tiny one. Cute. They're really very artistic. Finally, the last way is to take and draw out a design like we showed before. Using the release paper, trace that and transfer that to the back of fused fabrics. One of the things you want to keep in mind when you're using that technique if your paper isn't as large as your fused fabric I then put another piece of release paper on top so that when I press this it doesn't let my iron touch the fused fabrics. Then I will peel that off, then you can peel the rest and there's your little design. It transfers, whether you use a pen or pencil. Really, too, because you're using fused fabrics you don't have to worry about the straight of grains. Notice this is on an angle because that's where the color is I wanted to use. Most of the time, we throw away this release paper after using the paper-backed fusible web. But what a great way to re-use it, and design. You can use it over and over again, both sides of it until it's just used up. Whether you're starting with a pattern and you want to add a pine tree, a palm tree, whatever type you can use it with the collage technique and this free form design idea. When designing fusible collages, art quilts, you're going to have, Laura, a host of things left over a host of fabrics. These are some of your creations. Yes, I love working with these leftover pieces of fabric. These are all kind of randomly designed with the leftovers. What triggered this design, I remember is I had this little piece of fabric like that and that triggered the rest of the design. A great combination of colors. You call yourself the frugal fuser. I don't throw away any of my scraps. Here you can see some of the scraps that I've kept from other projects. They all have glue on them. You want to save them. Because they have glue on them, I can start composing on a background fabric, like this. I would look through my scraps and something would inspire me. It would trigger, maybe it's a roof of a house or in this case, to me this looks like a hill, so I'll put it down. And right away, I know I'm making a landscape. Then I think about what's on top of that hill. A tree is on top of that hill. So I go and pick out another color something that will contrast well. And maybe I'll free-cut my tree trunk like this a little curve, maybe like that. That would go on top of the hill. And what's on top of a tree? You need some tree tops. So again, you're going in and you're free cutting. I like using really sharp scissors because these are raw edge clips. They don't get finished at all. I end up making a really tiny tree top! ( both laugh ) There's a bigger one! Oh, that looks good together. Isn't this fun? You make it up as you go along, just like that. Maybe I'll end up with something that looks something like this. These are all improvised, made up as you go along. You have added a little extra grass. You can look through here. Right. Oh, maybe this is a fence. Let's try that. There's a neat little fence going on. You can not be afraid of cutting into your fabric. You have to cut into them, because it's playing. A lot of it is about playing with the fabric. And auditioning. Exactly. Before you fuse it, you could take something off. If it doesn't work, you save it for something later on because it never goes bad. Once the glue is on there, you can use it forever. I've seen your design studio. Your scraps are a little bit more extensive. They're all over the place. More extensive than this. Yes. In this first episode of our "Art Quilts" Frieda and Laura have shared with us the basic designing techniques. We've done it from the basic collage technique to working with scraps, from whole fabric to using the leftovers. As you look at Laura's designs you'll see some machine quilting. You'll also see some different hand stitching. In our second episode of this series we'll be taking the workshop approach going through the processes of putting borders on whether they're free form, as you see here or more exacting, and then showing you some of the sewing and stitching techniques to complete your project. It's a workshop approach that's easy to do. Are you looking for a new way to express your sewing creativity? How about the theater? Community, children's and high school theater productions are frequently looking for creative spirits with talent. With me today is Steffani Lincecum, a designer pattern maker and sewing instructor with more than 20 years of experience in Hollywood with film, TV and theater. Steffani, you're going to share your ideas when sewing how to create it differently than when we're sewing for ourselves. Right, there's a big difference between sewing a regular, standard street garment, things you would wear every day and costumes. The first thing you notice is at first glance the pattern seems to be very exaggerated. You have to realize that when you're under the lights everything kind of washes out. Also, you're at a great distance. So one thing we have to do is make sure that we're choosing fabrics that don't wash out under the lighting and at the distance. You're going to find things that have a lot of texture in them so that translates once you get it on stage. You have a great hint at how you choose fabric. Right, when I'm in a fabric store and I'm looking for something I actually have to kind of blur my eyes a little bit to make sure that when it's at a distance. Step back. Sometimes I actually drape it on a rack go to the other side of the store and squint to make sure because sometimes you fall in love with a print. Then you get it on stage and it completely washes out. It could become a solid. And the texture that you have chosen for this great outfit, this is in a production. This was in a University of Wisconsin production of "Imaginary Invalid" last year. It was designed by a wonderful graduate student here Rachel Barnett. She did a wonderful job at choosing the fabrics and creating a really dramatic effect. When you look inside of these garments-- I wish you could feel them, they're heavy. Right, the big difference in garment construction for theater is that you have to think about this being durable enough to wear for seven or eight shows a week and to be laundered a few times a week. Also, these things go into stock for the various companies. They're going to use them for decades. You want it to be very durable. A lot of things have a very big interlining. Then, they have ample seam allowances so that you can alter it again for another person later. This interlining is the heavy part. I'm sure your stitch length is not long. No, and everything is very, very durable. In fact, some of the examples I saw when I was looking for these, they actually look like a historical garment on the outside but they have zippers on the inside for quick changes. So it looks very different. We have another period costume that you're seeing displayed now. It has many layers. It must weigh 15 pounds. Yes, absolutely. The dry cleaning can get very expensive on these things. It takes a lot of specialty care when you use a lot of things like dress shields inside to protect from perspiration. The inside of this dress, in the bodice area it's wired and firm. Absolutely, they use boning. All the layers are overlocked together then opened up. You have ample seam allowances and not a whole lot of clipping on the inside like you would in a normal garment. You want to make sure that you can alter it for another person later on. And that it will last for decades in storage. The fabric that is in this garment is almost like you'd use for home decorating. Absolutely. That's one of the really cool tricks that we learn. Because you're able to use a bigger pattern in this sort of production sometimes you go to the home decorating section especially for period garments. You can get this type of thing at your JoAnne's or-- At a variety of stores. Sure. Steffani, this is encouraging, to find out ways that we can use sewing in other parts of our lives and share with our community. Thank you for being with us. Thank you so much. If you would like to have more information on Steffani and if you'd like to know more about how you can become involved in sewing for community theater

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NancyZieman.com and on this site, you'll find all the information you'll need on Sewing with Nancy, Nancy's Corner. You can also watch episodes of past Sewing with Nancy programs. Next time, we'll be back with our second program of "Art Quilts- Fusible Collage" techniques with Laura and Frieda. Until then, thank you for joining me. Bye for now. Nancy, Frieda and Laura's fully-illustrated "Art Quilts- Fusible Collage Workshop" workbook includes laminated instructions for all the techniques featured in this two-part series. It's $19.99, plus shipping and handling. To order the book, call 1-800-336-8373

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